Paul von Lilienfeld

Political career

Capozzi (2004: 92) describes Lilienfeld as "a Russian functionary who occupied himself with sociology as a form of intellectual diversion," while Ward (1897: 260, 264) refers to him as "Senator Lilienfeld," and Worms (1897: 657) qualifies him as a sénateur de l’Empire russe. Gerschenkron (1974: 435, footnote 24) calls him "a Balto-Russian," while Barberis (2003: 69) says he "descended from Swedish nobility, held important Russian judicial posts, was governor of Kurland for 17 years and ultimately became a senator of the Russian Empire." Lilienfeld, in fact, was governor of the Courland Governorate from 1868 till 1885, and in the same year in which he put out Social Physiology (1879), his brother, Baron Otto Friedrich von Lilienfeld, on either the 16 or 22 May, founded a seaside town along the banks of the Saka River on Courland’s far western Baltic coast, naming it Pāvilosta (Paulshafen) after his sociologist sibling. Lilienfeld, who had studied at the Lycée Alexandre in Saint Petersburg, was awarded many honors in recognition for the services he performed for the empire; it would seem, however, that the aspect of his political career for which he felt most proud was his collaboration in the emancipation of Russia’s serfs (Worms 1903: 265).

Scientific career

In parallel with his administrative duties, Lilienfeld was "a tireless worker, always able to find room for scientific research" (Worms 1903: 265). Lilienfeld's research leaned towards social philosophy in general, and to speculations about the organic theory of society in particular (Worms 1903: 265), the first outlines of which he began to sketch, in Russian, in his Elements of political economy of 1860 and his Mysli of 1872, and to develop more fully in German as his Gedanken of 1873–1881 (Lilienfeld 1894: 825; Lilienfeld 1896b: xiii–xiv). Lilienfeld later served as both vice-president (1896) and president (1897) of the Institut International de Sociologie, which had been founded by René Worms in 1893 (Worms 1895: 881; Worms 1897: 657; Barberis 2003: 54–55).

Organic theory of societies

Lilienfeld's main work, Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft (Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future), was issued in five volumes over eight years: I, Die menschliche Gesellschaft als realer Organismus [Human society as real organism] (1873); II, Die socialen Gesetze [The laws of society] (1875); III, Die sociale Psychophysik [Social psychophysics] (1877); IV, Die sociale Physiologie [Social physiology] (1879); and V, Die Religion, betrachtet vom Standpunkte der realgenetischen Socialwissenschaft, oder versuch einer natürlichen Theologie [Religion considered from the viewpoint of the real genetic social science, or attempt at a natural theology] (1881).

An anonymous reviewer in Mind noted that the first three volumes

start with the conception of Society as a real organism, and attempt to work out this point of view upon the methods proper to the Natural Sciences. The treatise commences with a demonstration that Society consists of individuals in the same manner as the physical organism is made up of cells, and that the one is real in the same sense as the other. With this idea the author seeks to exhibit a thorough-going identity between the laws of Nature as they exist in the case of its highest development, Society, and in its lower stages, including the individual human being.... The first three parts are worked out with great minuteness, the connecting thread being the conception of a real analogy between the individual and the social group as the essential foundation of the Social Science of the future (Anonymous 1878: 152).

Lilienfeld's fourth volume dealt with "the establishment and elucidation of the Laws of Development of the Social Organism from the physiological point of view" (Anonymous 1880: 298).

What precisely Lilienfeld meant by his term "real analogy" puzzled more than one other social scientist, including Lester F. Ward, writing in the pages of the American Journal of Sociology:

What is an analogy? In biology, which is the standpoint of [Lilienfeld] and of all defenders of the social organism theory in whatever form, this word has a very definite meaning — a technical usage — viz., physiological without anatomical similarity. It is contrasted with homology, which is anatomical similarity irrespective of function. If this is all [Lilienfeld] mean[s] by the analogy between society and an organism, there seems to be no objection to pursuing it to its utmost extent and determining how far social functions resemble organic functions, recognizing all the time that there is no real morphological or structural resemblance any more than there is between the wing of a bat and that of a bird. What, then, does Senator Lilienfeld mean by his oft-repeated expression, "real analogy"? Does he mean that here are homologies? It seems difficult to interpret him otherwise. Ward 1897: 260).

Social Darwinist?

In addition to being labelled an organicist sociologist, or simply organicist, Lilienfeld has also been classified as "a systematic Social Darwinist and laissez-faire advocate" (Weikart 1993: 479), who "considered war a natural phenomenon necessitated by Malthusian population pressure and the resultant struggle for existence" (Weikart 1993: 481–482). Lilienfeld did not, however, deny "the propriety of laws ensuring honesty in business competition" (Weikart 1993: 479).

Lilienfeld's advocacy of fair business practices is not anomalous, given his thoughts concerning the importance of society on forming the individual:

If man, from the physical point of view, is first of all a product of nature, he is, from the point of view of intelligence, above all a product of society. The most important organs of the nervous system form, develop, differentiate, and integrate under the influence of the social milieu, just as the purely physical part of man is formed and developed under the influence of the physical milieu by the natural differentiation and integration of forces. The economic activity of society, work, customs, habits, laws, political liberty, authority, religion, science, art, in short, all of social life, forms and educates man, gives to his efforts, to his intellectual, moral and aesthetic needs, this or that direction, pushing in this or that sense the complete development of the superior organs of the nervous system (Lilienfeld 1873; cited in Schmoller 1902: 169, note 81).

Indeed, the organic theory of society of Lilienfeld and Worms would seem to be an antidote to rampant laissez-faire competition, as Barberis (2003) noted:

Organicism also reacted to a widely held political idea of the time: that individualism had been taken to extremes in modern society and that it was necessary to bring balance through an opposite emphasis. Against the self-sufficient individual of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the organicists claimed to bring the support of science to the primacy of the social bond. For these authors, the natural human state was that of association. As Worms put it in a critique of the contract theory: "Men did not need to associate themselves, they were born associated, and they remained so." Psychological and moral capacities developed through this association; in other words, humans owed their consciousness and their capacity for relative autonomy to society. Individuality as it was known and prized in modern society was a product of society. Lilienfeld stated this as a simple fact: "The intellectual and moral faculties of man are exclusively the product of social life." The organicists believed this should settle the conflict between individual liberty and social solidarity; humans would come to realize their strict dependence on the collective (Barberis 2003: 62).